>Hi and welcome to our site. Please check out our specific prayer points under the link – Please pray with us! – Prayer Points
Also feel free to check out the other links which shares a bit more info on our work in Papua New Guinea.
We are nicely settled in and very thankful for the way the Lord has smoothed things out for us until now. Since we arrived we have met many new people, from the base here at New Tribes in Goroka. We are currently staying on Sobega, which is about 6 km’s from the little town called Goroka. This base serve focuses on Missionaries in the highlands region of Papua New Guinea. Not far from us is a place called Lapilo, where you can find the major NTM base that serves the whole field here in Papua New Guinea. Lapilo is basically the headquarters for NTM in Papua. It is also here that Madeleen goes to school.
A view over the houses of those in orientation (that would be us)
We are currently busy with a general orientation here in Papua. We are meeting everybody we need to know, visiting different offices etc. all in order to be able to do our business well. We have also started with our language studies. There are about 5 phases needed to be completed when you acquire a new language. We have therefore started with the phase called Warm-up. During this phase we start meeting the people in the villages around us. They call the little areas where they stay ‘house lines’. We are therefore letting the community get to know us. We are pick up some very elementary survival phrases, such as greetings, introducing yourself, asking direction, asking certain questions etc. We are also mapping out the area in order to get to know the different ‘house lines’ and the different families and individuals. We are also keeping an eye open for potential language helpers. This would be a specific individual whom we could approach in order to help us with language study. Here is a few pics. of the area in which we are living.
We have found the people of the area to be lovely and kind people. I do how ever see the fact that most of them are still firmly gripped in the powerful hand of animism. Even though many have heard the truth here in the area of Goroka they have mixed it with the lie. This is one of the major problems here in Papua! Many part have been reached in some way or the other, it has more than often never been done properly. In most cases people have been evangelized using the national trade language, which is a very simple language. Furthermore Scriptures have not been provided in their own language or ‘tok pleis’ as they would called it. And often no discipleship has been done, leaving the people, with a bit of knowledge but not enough. The product is a syncretised church, which is even more difficult to reach than tribes living in the swamps of the Gulf Province. We can therefore definably pray that God will help us that we may complete our task in a worthy manner as He has taught us!
We are living comfortably in the house we are renting from New Tribes. Here is a few pictures of our little house.
Here is Marie working in our kitchen.
We truly thank the Lord every day for our supporters. I am sure you would understand that the more we are in such unfamiliar circumstances the more we realise our need to trust in God and the more we realize our need for supporters! Each day as we prepare to enjoy our meals, we are reminded that it is due to obedient Christians in SA that we can have some food.
The Lord has also been pointing out to us the fact that miracles are needed to complete this great task, and prayers therefore need to be put in without seizing!
Thanks for giving, writing and praying, may God richly bless you!
And as the Papuan’s would say:
‘lukim ju sampla taim‘
Most People are braught to faith in Christ, not by argument for it,
but by exposure to it.
Please follow the link to our photo album for more photos.